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Hmm. See, here is a major problem I have with the argument of MMO vs. mud. That one can't do what the other does. True **only** within the limits of the current systems. But consider.. Second Life is right now only just a graphical mush, though one group of people have stuck into it some script to mimic an RPG area. Same problem as the other RPGs, the stuff is all repeatable quests and stuff to hack up. The fundimental problem in all cases is that it takes time, effort and skill to produce quests, so you get canned quests, or at best, quests that are "same as before, but with variations". That's somewhat easier in text, but its still fairly limited. And all mud style games and MMOs work like that. The closest thing to non-linear you can ever expect to see in MMOs is progressive servers, where solving a set of key quests "unlocks" the modules and areas of the game that you didn't have access to before. The problem being, that in cases like EQ, that can mean being limited to a few races at the start and only getting ones like the Kerra of Luclin *after* the existing players have unlocked the areas. It also means that improvements in maps and a mess of other things are never seen "until" they get unlocked in some even later module. In muds (and in EQ2) you have epic world quests. Ones that run from one end of the game to the next, where new parts get unlocked as you go. But *most* of everything going on is still repeatable canned stuff.
Its just not possible for a small number of people to code completely new world wide quests every week or make them all non-repeatable. With graphical systems, its just an order of magnitude worse.
Now, that said, what might be needed is some adaptive AI in mobs that give certain types enough autonomy to start in some caves some place, then move out to the forests, spread camps through them, etc., while the players don't even know the danger. All you do is set goals for them and some parameters for how they are going to act. Some might prove to be allies, others dangerous enemies, depending on their agression, goals, etc. Then, let the players build the rest of the world, al la Second Life, with the main limitations being how much cash they can scrape together to build and maintain the things they build.
In other words, combine the concepts. Make it a player created world, where *they* get to design the combat systems, etc., or at least the descriptions (and animations if 3D), and placing the only limits on a) how much damage things can do at what levels , b) how many skills of that level you can create personally and c) how many skills someone else can pick up from those. Let classes develop naturally, as people create skills, but have to pick "which" of those go together best. But, add additional limits to balance this, like creating a healing feature over a certain level automatically effecting the maximum damage you can do with anything else. Let them do what ever they want, within the bounds of sane limits on how those interact, then let people figure out what "class" they are based on what they pick. For that matter, make societies *and* guilds. Guilds should be real guilds. You might hire some thug to guard the doors into your guild if you are a priest, but you don't have theives, assassins, warriors, etc. *joining* them. Guilds are collections of like minded people, with similar skill sets, who work to improve "those" skills. Societies are collections of like interested people, who may have entirely different skill sets, which they believe can compliment each other. Having the ideas seperate means that you can create a guild designed to improve combat, for example, and naturally end up with an entire group that is trained to be a "Knight" class, or a "Monk". There might still be some variation in the skills, they might find people from other guilds willing to teach them, under the table as it where, skills their guild disdain, but this develops naturally, not as a "pick and choose" sort of thing where you just one day talk to someone and they teach you a dozen new skills to show off. Even the real world doesn't work that way. In the real world, you get "classes", with some cross over and some become experts at those classes, others are jacks of all trades, but the later pay for it by not being "quite" as good at them. Class based systems try to enforce this rule to stupid extremes, classless ones ignore it, producing something a result that is just a tad absurd. Both get it wrong imho.
The best world is one where classes and structure develop naturally, due to the constraints and rules of how the world works, where the world is a world, so you can change it, not just stage dressing and where, like the real world, things exist around the corner you don't know where there until you bump into them. That those things are orcs instead of other humans just means the rules get more complicated, not that everything should be prescripted.
The obvious problems with this approach though is, of course, scripting the AI for the mobs and making sure that the "populations" of NPCs that belong to the races of the people playing don't get so big they vanish all the outside threats. Mind you, that means that building your castle needs to attract those (also AI driven) NPCs. It needs to be semi-real time strategy + mud + Second Life type design to *really* do what people are suggesting. Anything short of that is going to still be "mostly canned quests, but we have a few long running ones that let you conquer W or defeat X, which will late be replaced with Y and Z when these are finished."
If done right imho, the player base should create most of the world, with the staffs only job being to maybe fiddle with the combat/magic/priestly skills of the mobs or give them a bit of extra encouragement to start a war, if the player and NPC cities start getting a bit too big or spread out into to much of the world. But getting it right...
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